The Property

by Catriona King

  He noticed that the man boasted incongruously bulky, muscled forearms beneath his rolled-up sleeves, like Popeye, and it reminded him of the men who’d recently laid new carpet at his parents’ house. Perhaps all that hammering and pulling was a workout of sorts; The Rug Workout maybe? He smiled at the title, immediately knowing what most people’s version of a workout on a rug was likely to be.

  “Mister Dodds?”

  “I am, aye. Who’s askin’?”

  If they hadn’t known they were in East Belfast the man’s accent would have told them, its long ‘a’s and sharp ‘i’s a phoneticist’s dream.

  Craig produced his ID and was about to ask Liam to do the same when he noticed that the D.C.I. seemed to be entranced by a thick green carpet, so he left him to commune.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions about a carpet you laid many years ago, Mister Dodds. Do you keep records?”

  “I do, aye.”

  With that Dodds turned and began walking towards the back of the shop, pausing as he passed Liam to say, “Eleven quid a square metre an’ I’ll chuck in the underlay fer free.”

  Craig rolled his eyes, knowing that he should tell the D.C.I. to join them, but not having the heart, so fervent was the carpet lust in his eyes. When they reached a small back office, Dodds indicated a row of hard-covered volumes stacked untidily on a shelf.

  “Which year was ye wantin’?”

  “Two-thousand-and-seven. How long do you normally keep your records for?”

  “Never throw ’em out. The tax man’s a bugger.”

  He got no argument on the point, and a few seconds later a heavy volume was banged down on the desk in front of Craig.

  “Where was it?”

  “The Howard Tower Hotel.”

  A grin split the man’s thin face. “I ’member that carpet well. A lovely burgundy coloured Saxony. Gorgeous it was.”

  Craig marvelled at his detailed memory.

  “Right, which month was it laid then?”

  “August sometime, I think, but could you check a few weeks either side?”

  Foolishly he hadn’t checked the exact dates of the floor laying with Davy and he didn’t have the heart to ring him again, he was working so hard. But the analyst had confirmed that The HTH’s carpets had only been laid once in its eleven year existence, something that Calvin Dodds was about to confirm.

  After some muttering and flicking of pages, during which Liam entered the office wearing his bartering face, a canny, stern but not unfriendly mask that had earned him discounts even in stores that professed publically that it was beneath them to offer such a thing, the shopkeeper turned the open book towards Craig; a sinewy finger perched on the end of a line.

  “There ye go. Beginnin’ of August twenty-seven, an’ it was the Saxony. I laid it myself.”

  Craig peered at the row and then at several above and below it. “I don’t see any mention of underlay.”

  “We didn’t supply it.” The carpet seller sniffed, telling them exactly what he thought of the snub. “The boss said they’d gat a job lat from another business they ran, so it was already down when I arrived wi’ the carpet.”

  Seeing Liam about to jump in Craig got there first.

  “You laid every floor of the hotel?”

  “Aye, all ten of ’em. Me an’ my wee lad did the lat. Carpets, tiles and vinyl. It was a big job, but I’d set aside the fortnight.”

  Craig pressed his next point cautiously, not wanting to lead the man and render his evidence useless in court. “That included the ground floor? Where the hotel reception was?”

  “Aye.” Dodds frowned suspiciously. “Why? Did someone complain? I did a good job there, I-”

  Craig shook his head. “There was no criticism of your work, Mister Dodds.”

  Although there was a bloody great bump on the floor…

  “Just staying with the ground floor. When you laid the carpet there, did you notice anything strange? Perhaps about the floor itself?”

  The man thought for a moment and then nodded, making Craig’s heart leap.

  “Aye, I did. The under-felt was wild thick. It must have been a good three inches.”

  Three inches of cushion above the girl’s bones, and then Dodd’s Saxony carpet on top would have added another inch. If the food trolley had mostly been kept in the same position it might explain why her skull hadn’t been walked on and crushed.

  “And that’s not usual in public spaces that get a lot of wear?”

  “Nat that thick. Mind ye, I suppose if they had it left over, why nat?”

  “And had the underfelt been evenly laid all over the ground floor before you arrived?”

  Dodds gave a grunt of disgust. “It had nat indeed! There was a bloody great lump over by the corner wall where the felt must have bunched ap underneath, but when I offered to lift that section an’ re-lay it, fer nothing, mind ye, they didn’t want to know. Just told me to put the carpet down an’ do my job.”

  Yes! The management had known not to look beneath the underfelt.

  “Who exactly was it that told you, Mister Dodds?”

  “What?”

  “Who was the manager who instructed you not to smooth out the underfelt?”

  “The boss.”

  “The hotel manager?”

  “No, the boss, boss. Yer man Barr. He was the new owner.”

  Craig wanted to punch the air, but he needed to be sure that he had every fact, so he produced his smart-phone and flicked to a picture of Kamran Barr.

  “This man?”

  Dodds peered at the screen, then donned his glasses and peered again before shaking his head, shocking the detective. Liam abandoned his buying stance temporarily, took out his own mobile and tried again. This time the shopkeeper nodded.

  “That’s him.”

  He was looking at a photograph of Dalir Barr, the younger brother.

  Craig pressed Dodds further, waving the photo of Kamran in front of his face. “But was this man with him? Did you ever see him?”

  “Nope. Mind ye, he looks a bit like the other one, doesn’t he? Only nat as fat. Who is he?”

  Craig slid his phone back into his pocket. “It doesn’t matter.”

  And it didn’t at that moment, because it wasn’t going to alter his plan of attack. Just because Dalir had done the leg work to hide the bones didn’t mean that his older brother hadn’t been involved in the murders too. They were almost where they needed to be before they met with Kamran Barr.

  “Thank-you, Mister Dodds. A Sergeant Harris will be in touch to get your statement down on paper.”

  Craig was halfway out of the shop before he realised that his deputy was still in Dodds’ office, bartering for something soft and warm in which to squidge his hobbit toes.

  ****

  The C.C.U. Fifth Floor. The Fraud Unit.

  When Andy stepped out of the lift and saw he was in a duplicate of the murder squad-room he did a quick scan, and amidst the bent heads working diligently, normally not the double of theirs, he spotted an office in the same position as Craig’s. He strode across to it briskly, determined to get there before Kyle to establish his seniority, for some reason people often viewing the spy’s laconic indifference as a mark of elevated rank.

  His plan to knock and enter the office assertively was rendered redundant halfway through his journey by a woman stepping out to greet them like long lost friends.

  “Andy, Kyle! How nice to see you.”

  The fact that her pleasure was accompanied by a look of surprise and her sentence rising at the end questioningly, said that even though Andy had twice asked Alice to call ahead and say that they were coming she obviously had not. He already missed Nicky, after only one day.

  All that aside, he smiled as D.C.I. Deidre, ‘Dee’, Murray approached them, her arms vacillating between a handshaking position and a hug. She settled for a pat on both men’s arms and then motioned them to enter the office.

  The warmth came from the D.C.I. knowi
ng them from her secondment to Craig’s squad on the Drake case the previous December, many of them having secretly hoped that she would stay on. Sadly Murder had too many D.C.I.s already; proving beyond doubt that there were a lot of ghoulish and ambitious detectives around.

  Andy gazed wide-eyed around the small office, admiring the tasteful prints on its walls and the plants dotted here and there.

  “You’re the boss here?”

  The query had emerged in an unintentionally incredulous tone.

  As Dee glanced round from where she was busily pouring coffees and arranging them with some biscuits on a tray, it occurred to Andy that Craig never arranged biscuits for them, but then he had his own PA, and even if he hadn’t had, a man who lived on red wine and microwave dinners unless supervised was never going to bother organising custard creams on a plate.

  The barista D.C.I. laughed at the question. “Yes, I’m the boss. Try not to sound so shocked.”

  She carried the tray across, nodding them to help themselves and taking a seat behind her desk.

  “I have been since February. There are quite a few units where D.C.I.s lead now: Fraud, Vice, Aidan Hughes was the lead there day-to-day before he joined Murder. Drugs as well up on the north coast; that’s Andy White’s bailiwick now. The Murder Squad used to be led by a D.C.I. as well, under D.C.S. Harrison at arm’s length, but when Marc was promoted he said he would only take the rank if he could stay on the street, so now it’s led by a hands-on D.C.S..”

  She smiled and sipped her coffee. “He was right to insist. His clear-up rate is far higher and faster than most squads.”

  “He heads up Intelligence now as well.”

  Andy had said it deliberately to annoy Kyle, but if it had stung the spook he gave no sign.

  Dee set down her cup and got to business.

  “Lovely and all as it is to see you both, I’m guessing you didn’t come here because of my twinkly smile. So, what can I do for you?”

  His leadership established Andy decided that he wasn’t going to do all the work, so he nodded Kyle to summarise why they were there, chipping in just at the end.

  “I’m thinking that the two questions we need answered are: Who funded the Barrs’ first business? And whose cash are they laundering now?”

  He placed the smart-pad that he’d brought with him in front of her and watched as she flicked through the first few slides, finally nodding in agreement.

  “That sounds about right, although… you could be missing the obvious.”

  Andy frowned, not insulted but wondering immediately what he’d failed to see. Kyle was even less insulted; he liked people who spotted things that he didn’t and made him view life though a new lens. It elevated Deidre Murray from being an averagely attractive women that he’d barely noticed before to being a potential, if short-term, mate. The fact that she already had a husband didn’t figure in the D.I.’s self-absorbed view of life.

  Andy gathered himself enough to ask. “Which is?”

  She turned the smart-pad around to face them and pointed to a short paragraph. “There, in the company’s constitution from two-thousand-and-four. The Barr brothers have had a partner since day one. Someone called Farshid Lund.”

  They were aware of Lund’s role in the company currently, but no-one had thought to check when he had joined.

  “So your third question could be, why is Lund involved in a family company, which are notoriously cliquey? He must have brought something pretty special with him to be given equal partnership right away. And, as the Saudis aren’t short of a few bob, my guess would be that that special thing was the company’s start-up funds.”

  It was obvious now that it had been pointed out and showed the good sense of involving Fraud.

  Kyle edged forward on his chair. “Can you prove it? Go back through the accounts and identify exactly when the funds were injected?”

  Dee smiled at him. “The analysts we have here could do that blindfolded. I can have it for you within the hour.” She turned back to Andy. “Your second bit will take a lot longer. Identifying whose money they’ve laundered over the years will be a real challenge. Their clients will have sent their funds circuitously if they used banks, and if it was passed on as cash then it could take even longer.”

  She flicked through several more slides, nodding in confirmation of her words. “There are at least thirty businesses here, and they’re just the ones that you know about. This will be a big case and resource heavy. I’ll have to get clearance from my A.C.C.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A.C.C. Price. Do you know him?”

  Andy almost choked, whereas Kyle laughed, exclaiming.

  “Know him? Slept with him!”

  It was an expression normally used jokingly to imply an intimate knowledge of someone, but in this case Andy knew he was also referencing the details in Price’s file.

  Dee took the comment literally.

  “I didn’t know you were gay, Kyle.”

  Andy wondered if he’d heard a slight note of disappointment in her voice, but was just thankful that she’d failed to spot the sting behind the D.I.’s quip.

  Kyle responded to her literal interpretation equally literally.

  “I’m not. I meant that we know a lot more about Christopher Price than we care to-”

  Andy cut him off sharply. “Let’s focus on the work.”

  It wasn’t the time or place to disclose what they knew about the A.C.C.; in fact, there probably never would be one, unless they wanted to be charged with slander. Their juicy piece of gossip would have to wait until Christopher Price was long dead and they were all playing bridge in some retirement home.

  Andy rose to his feet, ending the meeting. “I’d be grateful for confirmation of Farshid Lund’s name attached to the start-up funds as soon as possible, Dee, and hopefully the A.C.C. will give you permission to pursue the rest.”

  If he can drag himself away from his voyeurism for long enough that is.

  “Let me know, please.”

  “I will, definitely.” She opened the door to walk them out. “I’ll get someone on it right now and drop it up to you.” They were almost at the lift when a thought occurred to her. “What time are you briefing?”

  “The chief’s called it for four.”

  “Great. I’ll bring it up then. It would be lovely to see everyone again.”

  Andy made a mental note to warn Craig off any discussion of Christopher Price.

  ****

  The Labs. 1 p.m.

  Craig and Liam entered a pathology lab that was bustling, not so unusual in a place of work you might think, except that this one was normally dominated by the silence of the dead and the accompanying onus on its living occupants to work quietly and speak in hushed tones. The detectives had commented on the phenomenon many times, even when judging through the wall of noise that they created simply by being there.

  The geography of the building seemed to contribute to its tranquil ambience, with the ground floor, John’s empire, consisting of three dissection rooms usually empty apart from dead people, who weren’t talkative, and three discrete offices, John’s, Mike Augustus’, and the smallest one belonging to Marcie their PA, the segregation removing the opportunity for the group conversations and casual gossip that occurred every day at the C.C.U. In terms of volume the loudest things on the ground floor were John’s outer and inner offices, but only because of the striking rose-pink paint on their walls.

  Upstairs in Des Marsham’s world a similar quiet persisted, broken only by the occasional solemn scientific discussion, the gentle beeps of processing machines and the almost hypnotically rhythmic print-outs of their discoveries, all the noisy, practical business of actually collecting evidence performed in the outside world by CSIs. With the final addition of the frozen silence of the basement mortuary, the overall working atmosphere was unusually gentle, calm and almost reverent, until of course the detectives arrived to shake things up.

  But today the whole place
was different. Today there were scientific artists, forensic anthropologists, dentists and specialists in DNA and chemical analysis, if not exactly running and screaming through the corridors in excitement then definitely engaging in animated whispers and the hurried passing around of bones. In the midst of it all stood John in his element, conducting the discussions around him like a band leader, pointing to this and then that person to make their point.

  Craig stood watching the scene for a moment and then moved closer, trying to catch the medic’s eye. The pathologist saw him and left the group quickly, greeting each of the detectives in turn.

  “Nice party, John.”

  He completely missed Craig’s teasing, responding with, “Yes. It’s been very productive. Come into my office and I’ll tell you how.”

  They collected Des on the way, as he left Grace nodding thoughtfully at a graph on a board, and once Liam had shut the door behind them the usual peace returned. The pathologist was just about to start when he decided to give the honour to Craig instead.

  “Thanks, John, Des. We don’t have very long, so any answers you could give us on our outstanding issues would be great.”

  The pathologist’s response was to stand up again. “I could bring the specialists in as we go through them.”

  Craig waved him down. “Better not, thanks. I meant it when I said we don’t have long.”

  They really needed to get back to the office. He’d shifted his usual six o’clock briefing to four so they could gather the final pieces of information they needed to formulate an interview strategy that would prevent Kamran Barr and his family from wriggling off the hook.

  John began briskly.

  “OK, so, I’ll run through pathology, bones and dentistry and then Des can do DNA, chemical origin analysis and the hydroxide taggant.”

  Liam nodded approvingly. “Sounds like a plan.”